Suspect Sought in Foiled Times Square Bomb Plot

ENLARGE

Police guard the perimeter of Times Square on Sunday.
Getty Images

By

Joel Stonington,

R.M. Schneiderman,

Devlin Barrett,

Ellen Gamerman and

Sumathi Reddy

Updated May 2, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

A failed car bomb smoked, popped and shut down Times Square, causing panic, evacuations and confusion Saturday on one of the tourist spot's busiest nights. Most of the streets in the area were reopened Sunday morning, though a heavy police presence remained in the area.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said officers are heading to a town in Pennsylvania to talk to a man who believes he may have recorded a bombing suspect on his video camera. Police are looking a for a white male in his 40s who was seen shedding a dark shirt with a red shirt underneath, he said at an afternoon press conference. Investigators are now looking through "hundreds of hours of surveillance videos," Mr. Kelly added.

On Sunday, a Pakistani Taliban group took credit for the attempted attack in a short video. The video, purportedly from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan group, offered "congratulations to the Muslim ummah (community) on the jaw-breaking blow to Satan's USA." The video, which made no mention of the plot's failure, said the attack was a response to recent killings of top Pakistani Taliban figures, including Baitullah Mehsud.

Mr. Kelly said there is no evidence of a Taliban link to the attempted bombing and noted that the group had falsely claimed responsibility for other incidents in which it had no involvement.

"The intent was to cause mayhem," he said.

Authorities said a Nissan Pathfinder at West 45th Street and Seventh Avenue was left Saturday night loaded with a bomb made from two clocks, three propane gas tanks, two additional one-gallon gas canisters and fireworks.

"It appeared that [the bomb] was in the process of detonating and malfunctioned," said police spokesman Paul Browne.

A street vendor alerted a policeman on mounted patrol—Wayne Rhatigan, 47 years old, a 19-year-veteran of the force. In an interview, Mr. Rhatigan said he smelled gunpowder coming from the vehicle and went toward it, thinking it could explode at any second. He grabbed two other officers to help move people away from the smoking Pathfinder as he called for backup at 6:34 p.m.

Police blocked the area from West 43rd to 47th streets along Broadway and Seventh Avenue with metal railings. Parts of West 48th Street were also closed. Most of the streets were reopened Sunday morning after police removed the Pathfinder.

Police later said the Pathfinder was spotted on security video at 6:28 p.m. The video wasn't clear enough to identify the driver and no videos have been found showing the suspect in the attack, police said.

Pakistani Group Claims Credit

The Middle East Media Research Institute first reported the discovery of an online video claiming responsibility for the attempted car bombing in Times Square.

The video shows a montage while an unseen person speaks in Urdu. The speaker is allegedly Qari Hussain Mehsud, a spokesman for the Pakistan Taliban, formally known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. The video does not specifically refer to the Times Square incident, describing it only as "this attack."

Marc Sageman, a terrorism expert and former Central Intelligence Agency officer in Pakistan, said the Pakistan Taliban has a history of claiming responsibility for events they had nothing to do with. He said the group falsely claimed credit for a series of blackouts that hit the northeast several years ago and for a mass shooting in upstate New York last year.

"Everything should be looked at skeptically unless you have pretty strong evidence one way or another," Mr. Sageman said.

In a statement, the IntelCenter think tank said if the Pakistan Taliban's claims were confirmed, it would be their first attack against a target in the U.S.

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The Times Square scare is the latest in a series of attacks and attempted attacks on the U.S. over the past year that has counter-terror experts concerned about a possible shift in terrorist tactics to embrace small-scale strikes that are harder to identify and prevent.

Over the past year, on at least eight different occasions, people linked to radical Islamic thought attempted to carry out or carried out attacks on targets inside the U.S. That includes the failed Christmas Day bombing on board a Detroit-bound airliner, the shooting rampage at Ft. Hood in Texas, three separate bomb plots foiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last September, and a handful of earlier plots broken up last spring and summer.

Investigation Traces Plates to Connecticut

Earlier Sunday morning, however, New York officials had no information on those responsible for the attempted attack. "We have no idea who did this or why," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg, alongside Mr. Kelly at a Times Square news conference. The mayor called the bomb "amateurish."

Investigators said that the vehicle's Connecticut license plates didn't match the make of the car. The license plate's last known location was Kramer's Used Auto Parts in Stratford, Conn., according to a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation. No one answered the phone there Sunday.

Police said the bomb parts and an additional locked metal box would be removed to the NYPD Rodman's Neck firing range in the Bronx.

Ms. Napolitano said the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and the city of New York were investigating the incident, including examining the car, tracing fingerprints and looking at video from the area around the bomb.

"There are a lot of cameras in that area," she said, adding that there's "a lot of activities in terms of investigation."

Ms. Napolitano said there was no information to suggest that any other sites had been targeted in Saturday's car bomb attempt. Evidence so far suggested this was a "one-off attempt," she said.

Mr. Bloomberg earlier said that no other hazards were found and that "there's no more danger here than in any other city." Further, no credible threats were made by organized groups with regards to the attack, police said.

President Barack Obama had been briefed on the bomb. In a statement, the administration said that the president, who attended an annual dinner for White House news correspondents Saturday night, praised the response by the New York Police Department. The president has also directed his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, to advise New York officials that the federal government is prepared to provide support, the Associated Press reported.

'Everyone Started Running'

Street vendor Larry Franklin, 56, said a friend reported a man to police who put keys in the black SUV and walked away. His friend told him smoke began coming out of the back and police rushed to the scene.

"I looked back and boom," said Matthew Fox, 44, a street vendor. "Everyone started running and women started screaming." He said he was "10 blocks away from 9/11 when it happened," but that "this wasn't anything like that."

Nineteen-year-old Ivan Morrison, who was in town from Vermont to see "The Addams Family," said "it sounded like a deeper gun shot."

ENLARGE

A picture is displayed of an alarm clock found in a dark SUV which is said to be in the vehicle with a bomb that was discovered before it could be detonated in Times Square.
Getty Images

Subway service on many lines was suspended or delayed. On Broadway, "God of Carnage" and "A Behanding in Spokane" each began 30 minutes late, show officials said. The evening performance of "The Lion King" was performed as scheduled. Early reports erroneously said that the show had been canceled.

About 11 hours after the attempted attack, the streets of normally bustling Times Square were reopened and tourists again began pouring back into the area, many of them taking the incident in stride.

Honeymooners Lorenz Inglin, 31, and his wife Claudia, 27, who had traveled to New York from Zurich, Switzerland, said they lingered in Times Square to soak up the scene of police and a traffic jam of people, thinking whatever had happened was likely a hoax. "If we had known this was a real threat we wouldn't have stayed and watched it," said Mr. Inglin.

But they weren't planning to cut short their visit or avoid New York in the future. "We are aware that terrorists could happen anywhere," he said. "We always have the eyes open."

—Sophia Hollander, Ian Talley, Joseph De Avila and the Associated Press contributed to this article

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